Maintaining information on African politicians

There are many Wikipedias in many languages with an African public. They all have their own public and we want to share the sum of all knowledge with them all of them. Maintaining complete information on all the major African politicians on all these Wikipedias in text based articles is not realistic.

On many projects there are links for African politicians and when the Listeria bot is active. It will update the links whenever there is an update and it will perform this update on any Wikipedia that shares these links. For someone like Mr Bola Ahmed Tinubu it is likely that there will be an article and it will be show in the list. For someone like Mr Osagie Ehanire this is less likely and it will show a link to Wikidata.

In a personal project there are many national politicians for African countries.. The idea is that when something changes, it is reflected in the Listeria list on all the participating Wikipedias.. Recently I have done some work on Nigerian politicians, later office holders and some new Listeria lists. The new lists have to be added on other Wikipedias for them to share the latest data. 

New national elections will be held in Nigeria in November .. There will be many new people who will be a candidate and compete with incumbent politicians. They all belong to parties, they studied, some may already be known to Wikidata. They may make claims about their education, their background and yes, all these claims can be verified and find a place at Wikidata. For both claims that can and cannot be substantiated there is room if only to support a public that is to make a choice.

Thanks,

       GerardM

My three anwers for the questions of Bernadette Meehan

Mrs Meehan will be the next Chief Executive Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation. In her personal presentation she indicates what her questions will be to learn about our organisation:

* What brought you to this movement?

* How do we stay relevant over the next 25 years?

* What three Wiki resources should I read first?

* I read about Wikipedia on the website of Byte magazine. It sounded interesting and it was.

** This is where I have opinions

*** This is where I know that others will make better recommendations

I am certain that we will retain relevance. How that relevance will evolve has dimensions.

• we remain independent and thanks to our contributor communities our trust model remains in tact
• our relevance for AI training is likely to decrease because of our current inability to harness the knowledge we have and ensure validity
• when we improve the validity and consistency of our data, we will be better able to retain our English language public the main difference will be in the growth of the public for other languages

The most relevant factor will be the transformation of our community and its practices. Will it evolve so that one community will know what to trust from other communities. Will communities find ways to facilitate other communities. Will we trust other organisations and trust their qualities in order to partner and provide the best information possible?

Many Wikimedians have strong opinions declaring their objections as insurmountably. The problem is that even when they have a point they do not consider the value of what they reject. Typically what is rejected is the overall effect on completeness and fidelity for our public. One easy win is when all references with a DOI are all known at Wikidata. It provides a basis necessary for a check for retractions and for later publications citing our reference. Quality information evolves and we can and should have a tool that enables such considerations.

PS Is America still the best place for our movement given its shortcomings as a functional judicial system?

Thanks,

      GerardM